Overview of Program

Allergy & Immunology Fellowship Training

The Allergy and Immunology Fellowship at Boston Medical Center was founded in 1995 to train future Allergy and Immunology academicians, basic and clinical scientists who are well prepared to meet the demands of medical and academic practice as it evolves in the 21st century. The training program is integrated into the teaching and research environment of the Section of Pulmonary, Allergy, Sleep and Critical Care Medicine at Boston Medical Center (BMC) to take advantage of its well-established research programs in lung immunology and asthma epidemiology, as well as the outstanding opportunities for clinical training afforded by BMC. BMC was formed twenty years ago as a merger of Boston City Hospital and Boston University Medical Center. It is a highly successful hybrid entity combining a tertiary university-based medical center with an urban medical center that delivers care to the underserved populations of Boston. Fellows spend time in various outpatient adult and pediatric venues, as well as the inpatient adult and pediatric inpatient consultation services. Because of important clinical and research overlaps between Pulmonary Medicine and Allergy & Immunology, we feel that the close association of these programs will lead to synergistic approaches to research and to disease management. In fact, several of our trainees have completed training in Pulmonary and Critical Care prior to their Allergy & Immunology training.

The majority of fellows will be expected to spend 2 years completing their Allergy and Immunology training, as there is the opportunity for a third year of concentrated research activity for select individuals. Continuity clinics are done at BMC and include a 2-year rotation in adult Allergy Clinic (3 sessions/week of clinic and 1 session/week of procedures) and 1 year rotations in Pediatric Allergy Immunology and Respiratory (AIR) Clinic and Adult Asthma Clinic. Fellows also attend a weekly ½ day Allergy Clinic at the West Roxbury Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Inpatient consultations are performed in Adult Allergy & Immunology and Pediatric Asthma, Allergy & Immunology throughout clinical training. On average, this leaves 2.5 days a week for research and/or independent scholarly activity in the first 2 years.

At the outset of the first year, fellows will attend a city-wide fellows’ Core Curriculum on basic and clinical aspects of Allergy/Immunology. This is an opportunity for immersion to varied topics in A/I and network with fellows in other Boston A/I programs. Thereafter, with the help of the core faculty and an adviser, fellows meet with Pulmonary/Allergy faculty to devise a research project. At the end of training, a fellow will be extraordinarily well-prepared to enter the job market in academic medicine, whether as a researcher or clinician educator.